A license is a manner of selling software. After a customer buys a license from an equipment vendor, the customer is correspondingly authorized to use the software according to a commitment of the equipment vendor. In a conventional telecommunications network, generally, a single network element obtains license resources in an exclusive manner, and the bought license resources are generally more than what is required in a normal usage scenario, but an excessive part cannot be shared among network elements of a same type. When a site needs to be created or expanded, a license needs to be applied for again, and a whole license application period is relatively long.
Currently, to reduce device costs in a system, network devices are generally applied to network functions virtualization (NFV), that is, network elements are based on software, and applications provided by different equipment vendors are all deployed on a cloud-based virtual appliance in a form of software. In NFV, a network element is a virtualized network function (VNF) instance. In a network of an operator, it is required that, when user load decreases somewhere but increases elsewhere, VNF instances of a same type and a same manufacturer should be able to share one license, so that license resources can be fully used. However, the foregoing manner of using license resources exclusively by a single network element cannot meet this requirement.